Supporters of the new county personal income tax
outspent opponents by a margin of about seventy-to-one. Add in a few million
bucks in biased “news” coverage of the plight of our schools, provided
free of charge by The Oregonian and the network television affiliates.
Add in the threat by the county sheriff, who ought to be fired for threatening
to let murderers and rapists out of jail if the measure failed, and it’s
a wonder the measure only garnered 57 percent of the vote.

What does this election mean? Nothing, really. It
was entirely predictable that voters in a county that gets its news from
The Oregonian and Channel Two (KATU) would vote with their emotions, not
their brains. The guilt trip gets laid on pretty thick in Multnomah County.

Oregon voters sent no new message in this election,
except that the liberal Democrats in Multnomah County still think that
what the schools need is more money. Not more discipline. Not a wholesale
return to phonics. Not back to the basics and away from the multiculturalism
and radical environmentalism. Not merit pay for teachers, who are currently
paid based almost entirely on seniority, and earn more every year regardless
of job performance, or student performance for that matter. Just more
money.

Multnomah County voters continue to see the school
problem as merely a money problem. Maybe someone should have told them
that Oregon already spends more per student on education than our neighbors,
California and Washington and more than the national average; or that
our teachers already are the 13th highest paid in the nation, and have
a pension plan that is bankrupting the state.

The Doonesbury comic guy forgot to mention those
little facts, too. Maybe those stubborn little facts just aren’t as “funny.”
The New York Times columnist that has been beating up on Oregon of late
because of our short school year, also failed to mention how much we spend
on education in this state. After all, people might infer from the facts
that the money problem is on the spending side, not on the taxpaying side.

Eight out of the ten property tax measures benefiting
schools around the state failed in the same election that Multnomah County
voters gave themselves the state’s first county personal income tax, so
this was not a statewide phenomenon. This was just Portland area voters
doing what they do, voting for higher taxes.

I can’t help but wonder how many of those Multnomah
County “Yes” voters work for government, or have spouses or immediate
family members who do. I wonder how many of them are on welfare or benefit
from some other government handout program, and pay little or no taxes.

Bill Sizemore is a registered Independent who
works as executive director of the Oregon Taxpayers Union, a statewide
taxpayer organization. Bill was the Republican candidate for governor
in 1998. He and his wife Cindy have four children, ages eight to thirteen,
and live on 36 acres in Beavercreek, just southeast of Oregon City, Oregon.

Bill Sizemore is considered one of the foremost experts on the initiative
process in the nation, having placed dozens of measures on the statewide
ballot. Bill was raised in the logging communities of the Olympic Peninsula
of Washington state, and moved to Portland in 1972. He is a graduate of
Portland Bible College, where he taught for two years. On the side, he
does a daily, one-hour political news commentary show on KKGT Great Talk
1150 AM, a Portland radio station and a contributing writer for www.NewsWithViews.com.
E-Mail: bill@otu.org
Bill's Web site: www.Billsizemore.net

"Multnomah County voters continue
to see the school problem as merely a money problem. Maybe someone should
have told them that Oregon already spends more per student on education
than our neighbors, California and Washington and more than the national
average"